The Fine Art of Listening – in the beginning …
Music has been around for thousands of years. Actually, tens of thousands of years. Maybe it’s too bold of a statement to make in my first blog post, but I’d like to think that the ability and desire to organize sound – to make music – serves as one of the greatest milestones in human evolution.
This new blog, I suppose, is nothing new. We’ve been doing this for 40,000 + years. Amazing, though, that we are still fascinated by music – in fact, you could say we can’t get enough. Music is everywhere in our modern lives, from formal events like church or graduations, to casual things like shopping or even sports games.
Claudio Monteverdi‘s (1567-1643) opera “L’Orfeo” (1607) was not the first opera ever written, but it is the earliest opera written that is still performed today, 400 years later. (a mere 1/100th of 40,000 years – the dating of the earliest musical instrument found). The overture is pure rock-and-roll: 8 bars of loud music, all in the same key. No development. No tricks. Just rock, and repeat. After the overture, a sweet aria, in which a character called “La Musica” sings:
I am Music, who with sweet accents can make a troubled heart to be at peace;
I can set ablaze even the coldest of minds with noble anger or love.
A fitting beginning for the Fine Art of Listening. Thanks for visiting!
How about them Harry-Potter robes, eh?
Great! Keep your posts coming!
This is great. I envision the possibility of a community of listeners!
How ’bout them robes indeed! And how ’bout what to my ear is something of a Hollywood sound beginning with 1:35.
Erik,
This is great. Fond memories of Cantibus in Coro. A pleasure to read your writing again. Plus – the music!
Textures and harmonies of the L’Orfio ensemble are sublime, particularly (to cite that spot in the piece again) starting at 1:35. Listening – yet again! – just now I was paying especial attention to what is going on onstage with the setting. During passage cited the lights onstage gradually dim to darkness, leaving a void, which at the end of the passage is then occupied by the vocalist, whose image appears as a continuous unshadowing from foot to head.
Glad to be here at the beginning. Great, simple idea – the best ones often are. Look forward to more.
Still getting great pleasure from L’Orfeo. Part of my getting started this morning: up; pour coffee; get dressed; read Psalm 139; first 2 minutes and 18 seconds of the clip.
This is great and I look forward to more posts. I especially enjoyed the FAQ discussion about what is and is not “art music”. I’ve puzzled over this question for a long time. My most formative musical years (by which I mean about 16-early 20s) were deeply immersed in the rock music of the era (60s/70s). Then I fell in love with “classical” music somewhere in my 30s and have never looked back in terms of what I go out of my way to listen to. I still love, in some sense, a lot of the popular music I grew up with (I have a minor addiction to YouTube Grateful Dead videos). But it’s a different kind of love than I feel, for example, for Mozart’s Symphony 41. The difference between these musical realms still puzzles me. I agree it isn’t simply a matter of “seriousness”. A lot of what the Beatles did was serous, in a way. Except not in the same way as what Bach was up to. And a lot of popular music is highly crafted. But none of it can compare to the craft involved in the “classical” symphonists. I deeply appreciate how hard so many of the great composers worked at their craft. Some of their compositions took months or even years with periods of intense effort to complete. So maybe it’s just a question of degree – a continuum without clear boundaries. And yet, I can’t help but feel that that doesn’t quite capture the difference. I love the Beatles (and many others), but they seem to inhabit a different region of my soul than Beethoven – and St. Martin’s evensongs.
Well said! I think the lines defining what is Art Music are fluid. Certainly a lot of popular music is Art Music, and there is plenty of “classical” music which is not (and should be buried, never to be performed again). And if Art Music only includes serious music, then we immediately eliminate many of Rossini’s and Mozart’s operas.
Rather than draw distinct lines of what “is” and what “isn’t”, I prefer to just encourage people to listen with intentionality – not be passive about their listening. Passive listening makes me think of the “White Clown” in the book Fahrenheit 451 … and leads to the proliferation of really terrible music.
I saw F451 when it came out. Don’t remember the “White Clown.” Time to see it again. Actually to read the book first, which I’ve never done.
Separately, agreed re LISTEN WITH INTENTIONALITY.
Any connection between today’s selection (“ridiculously fast”) and yesterday’s Postlude (tempo: “as fast as possible” or something like that)?
No connection! This post was planned long before the postlude 🙂